While you're enjoying summertime with your kids and a reprieve from backpacks and school paperwork, there's still a lot to keep track of: use safe mineral sunscreen, don't let them have too much white sugar, gather natural strategies to stop their bug bites from itching, and feed them vegetables.Today I want to challenge you to add one more thing to what you'll impart to them this summer vacation: Kids can (and should) be taught to care for the earth. Why? One look at Facebook will yield … [Read more...]
5 Myths You Probably Believe About Food Pantries (& the Poor)
"Why are we going there? Are we getting poor?"I could hear the concern in my daughter's voice after I told them we were going to Buist Community Assistance Center, our amazing local food pantry, for a tour in a few days. Just as learning practical life skills like cooking is important to their development, I knew that exposing my kids to what it feels like to hit hard times (and the joy of service through volunteering) would be a perfect way to help them grow as people on the first day of … [Read more...]
Frugal Options to Protect your Family NATURALLY from the Sun
The average per-ounce price of my top 7 recommended sunscreens from the massive safe, natural sunscreen review is (gulp) over $7. That means that for a fairly standard 3-ounce tube, which is really quite small, you're paying over $15 (and could be up toward $30).Technically, an adult should use that tube up in just 3 applications on their full body. Ouch.What's a large family on a budget to do?Spreading the lotion more thinly so that you use less reduces its SPF – in fact, it's … [Read more...]
A Camping Explosion and a Gluten Free Real Food Menu Plan
I'll start with the explosion and make you wait for the gluten free camping food. Here's what happened to the Kimballs out in the woods when I tried to make breakfast using this new gluten-free camping meal plan instead of our old standard camping meal plan with lots of whole grains. All while still trying to keep camping budget friendly!See Katie shake the jar of soaked pancakes to mix the leavening in. (I prepped a soaked gluten-free recipe much like I do our old favorite camping … [Read more...]
Hawaii Ban on Sunscreen Ingredients Causes a Stir
This may read more like a news story than usual around here, but when you've tested over 100 natural sunscreens to find the very best ones, you tend to get a little passionate when sunscreen hits the news. In this case, a very GOOD thing may be happening to get more people to embrace zinc oxide sunscreens (will they step away from the sprays?), but opposition is fierce.Here's what's going on:Legislators in the state of Hawaii have passed a bill that, if signed into law by the … [Read more...]
20 Recipes Kids can Make (that aren’t braindead easy)
Here's one for you: Q: What do you get when you cross a child under 10, a can of bread dough, and a bag of shredded cheese?A: A children's cookbook. Up until a few years ago, it seemed like our culture didn't put a lot of trust in kids' tastebuds or cooking abilities. Recipes for kids to cook tended to be mostly what I would call "assembly instructions" like, "Put pizza sauce on an English muffin. Add pepperoni and cheese and ask an adult to microwave it."Ack!Not only is that not … [Read more...]
Study Shows: Learning to Cook As a Kid Improves Nutrition a Decade Later!
Does knowing how to cook as a kid ensure that you'll eat healthier as an adult? Hmmmm...I love science, but sometimes it's baffling that certain things even need to be studied.If you were to ask any mom out there whether knowing how to cook would help someone eat healthier, she would say, "Well yeah, duh, obviously it would!"But now we have science to prove it...A new study came out in the Journal of Nutrition, Education and Behavior this year showing that when young adults … [Read more...]
Can Kids Cooking Classes Help Picky Eaters?
If your kids only want to eat fruit gummies and won't even eat raw veggies with a delicious homemade ranch to dip them in, you're not alone. Picky eating (better termed selective eating) is a bit of an epidemic in America, but it doesn't have to be this way!A lot of parents think that the last place their selective eater should be is in the kitchen working with food. They're tired of the power struggles, the negative attitudes, and maybe even temper tantrums... from one or the other … [Read more...]
Katie’s Official Mockmill Review
Here at Kitchen Stewardship, I'm sort of known for both comprehensive and honest reviews of natural living and real food cooking products. People turn here first when it comes to what natural mineral sunscreen to buy, how to choose a good reusable bag for school lunch, and even non-toxic nail polish, a review we're still in the middle of testing for part two!As I've been sharing about our Grinding Challenge, you've gotten to see a lot of little peeks at the Mockmill, the grain mill that … [Read more...]
The Best Fresh Ground Whole Grain Einkorn Pizza Dough Recipe
Homemade pizza is a favorite for kids and adults alike - well, ANY pizza will fit the bill for many, but if you value real food, homemade pizza is truly the best "healthy junk food" ever! At least two of my children would eat pizza every day and never bat an eye. ;) They all loved when we tested different flours in homemade pizza all weekend!We have a tradition of having pizza (almost) every Sunday, which was also my own family's tradition when I was a kid. My mom tended to make homemade … [Read more...]
Two Homemade Whole Grain Gluten-free Flour Blends
Save money and time and boost nutrition by making your own homemade whole grain gluten-free flour blends!When switching to a gluten-free diet, everything can be overwhelming, sometimes even more so than just beginning a real food diet.You feel like there are no cheats possible!There's so much to learn, so many places gluten hides that you wouldn't expect, so many gluten-free flours to understand, and so many new things you have to buy and new techniques to try. Gluten-free baking … [Read more...]
Kids Test Gluten-Free Tortillas (Recipe for 100% Whole Grain Gluten-Free Tortillas with No Gums!)
Want to experiment on homemade gluten-free tortillas with me?Leah and I made some videos of our testing with the Mockmill and einkorn and gluten-free grains in tortillas, and I wanted to let you know a bit about what you'll see. We've made homemade whole wheat tortillas for years, and they're even a part of our Kids Cook Real Food eCourse to help kids learn to use a rolling pin properly (that's at the level for ages 6+, and kids love learning this skill!).But even though we've been … [Read more...]
Best Gluten-Free Crispy Crust Pizza Recipe
Gluten-free pizza is known for being a bit granular, almost powdery…perhaps chalky, almost certainly tasteless, and either with the texture of cardboard or so crumbly or floppy you can't pick it up. And that's refined flour pizza crust!Try to get a whole grain or partially whole grain gluten-free pizza crust and now you're in the realm of chewy and dense along with the potential crumbly and tasteless problems.My successful grain-free chickpea flour pizza crust has none of those issues, … [Read more...]
In Search of the Best Freshly Milled Pizza Dough Recipe Ever: The Kitchen Stewardship Gauntlet
The smell of something baking in the oven can literally make my kids swoon with joy, and the aroma of freshly baked honey whole wheat sourdough bread or whole wheat tortillas frying up on the griddle used to be a common occurrence around here.As we've cut down on grains over the years, any baking carries even more value for them because of its rarity.We generally have homemade pizza every Sunday, and this year my kids have been in charge every other week as I've volunteered with the high … [Read more...]
Making Delicious Gluten-Free Bread Possible {Expert Interview}
I explore with a gluten-free baking expert the elusive perfect homemade gluten-free loaf - it's really possible!It's weird being friends with me.I tend to give a lot of food advice, and when my dear friend's daughter suffered from headaches every day, I kept gently mentioning that I thought an elimination diet might really help, such as cutting gluten and dairy for starters.After a whole year, the family finally tried it - headache gone within a week, and every time the little … [Read more...]
Why Teach Kids to Bake with a Scale (VIDEO)
I've been experimenting with baking by weight, and once I figured out how to convert my favorite recipes from cups to grams, I'm really thinking it's the best way to learn to bake for kids.We teach kids how to measure flour in our Kids Cook Real Food online cooking class for kids - that they should let it "fall like snow" so the measurements are accurate. We show how if you pack down the flour, you get way too much - brick bread!But even when kids are being their most careful, … [Read more...]
Baking by Weight Conversion Guide {VIDEO}
Ever wonder which is the more effective way to bake? Should you use weights or volume measurements? (And if you have a recipe in cups, how do you convert it to grams? Or the other way?)As I've worked through my Grinding Challenge, I have been able to test out both ways of baking, actually using my scale to bake for the first time ever!I tried things like my mom's homemade whole wheat biscuit recipe with weights (in other words, I had to figure out how to convert cups to grams), and it … [Read more...]
Sun Protection from the Inside Out (VIDEO INTERVIEW)
This weekend I witnessed a most interesting phenomenon - a man in his 70s literally running from the sun to hide on a 50-degree day.As much as I was trying to get INto the sun, craving it in every cell for its Vitamin D boost, mood balancing effect and the 5 degrees of warmth that helped make the outing much more pleasant, he was finding shade at every opportunity.He visits his dermatologist a few times a year to have awful-sounding treatments for actinic keratosis, which he is … [Read more...]
Is “Green Enough” Good Enough? {GIVEAWAY}
I've been writing about avoiding plastic for years now, like the best non-plastic sippy cups and our favorite reusable snack bags, but guess what? I still reuse plastic bags in the kitchen, although I don't always wash them.Does the infographic above from Leah Segedie and Mamavation mean I shouldn't reuse them...or am I "green enough?" Green Enough is the title of Leah's brand new book, launched on Amazon just in time for Earth Day this month, and I had the pleasure of reviewing a … [Read more...]
Gluten is Evil? Don’t Even Listen – Unless it’s to Your Body
Is gluten bad for everyone? Should allll of us go grain-free for good? Should everyone ditch whole wheat and switch to baking with einkorn, or just use only freshly ground, soaked whole wheat as long as you don't have Celiac?Nope.Those aren't even the right questions to ask.We can't just say, "What's healthier, whole wheat or a gluten-free diet?" Because my body is not your body (in case you haven't noticed).People have been quick to throw gluten in particular under the bus in … [Read more...]
